DALHLEM EXPLOSION.

Grey River Argus, 11 January 1928, Page 5

DALHLEM EXPLOSION.

CHEMIST’S VILLA. As Detonator Factory. (Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn). (Received January 10 at 7.30 p.m.) BERLIN. January 9. Police investigations of the explosion in the house revealed that the basement of the tenement was used as a chemical laboratory for the manufacture of detonators. The presence of explosives had been a strict secret, the owners fearing police interference, so they told the authorities that they were manufacturing ccosmetics. When the debris was cleared away, nine barrels of high explosive were revealed in the ruins, sufficient to wreck the whole of this wealthy residential district.

Popular indignation in the neighbourhood is intense. Weingartner, one partner, is being prosecuted. The other, named Stammer, was blown to pieces by the explosion, which occurred while he was filling detonators with fulminate of mercury. Neither of the partners was a trained chemist, Weingartner being a fruit canner before the war, who converted the factory during the war for the manufacture of Verey lights for aeroplanes. A previous message stated that a thunderous explosion apprised citizens of Dalhlem that a villa occupied by experimenting chemists had blown up. A garage and one wing were destroyed. Two persons were killed and eight injured.